Casey Wasserman Should Resign From LA28 Says LA Mayor Over Epstein Fallout

Karen Bass can’t fire Casey Wasserman as the head of the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, but she sure wants the soon-to-be agency boss out ASAP.

“My opinion is, he should step down,” LA Mayor Bass said on President’s Day on CNN. “That’s not the board’s opinion,” the re-election seeker added of the unanimous support Wasserman received from his hand-picked LA Olympic board on February 11.

“The committee that participated in the Olympics is smart, the board made a decision,” Mayor Bass said Monday in a big dream in his statements of anger about Wasserman as his relationship with the late rapist Jeffrey Epstein and his imprisoned chief executive Ghislaine Maxwell came to light. “I think that decision was not good.”

“I don’t agree with the decision. I think we need to look at the leadership”

At that emergency LA28 board meeting last week and with former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy being considered as a possible replacement, the most prominent advocate for keeping the beleaguered Wasserman in place was Jeffrey Katzenberg, sources close to the events said at the time.

Katzenberg’s connection between Bass and Wasserman-appointed Eric Garcetti has long been seen as an important factor in their relationship preparing the city for the 2028 Summer Games. With an emphasis on solutions to LA’s homelessness problem, Katzenberg was a major promoter and contributor to the Congresswoman’s hard-fought bid to get LA’s top job in 2022.

Today, the unpopular Mayor’s seemingly unopposed campaign now has real rivals. Add to that concern has been growing in influential circles over Wasserman’s decision not to reveal his Epstein links up front.

As is always said in political affairs, it is not a crime, but a cover-up. Which is why, clearly anticipating a question from CNN’s Dana Bash, Bass put the real politics of Lew Wasserman’s grandson’s fate on the table.

Wasserman, who promised colleagues late last year that his 2002 charity tour with Epstein, Bill Clinton, Maxwell and others was the full extent of his encounter with the convicted sex offender in 2008, “has a credibility problem,” an insider said.

Bass’ comments on cable TV also come as many LA politicians, including Bass’s job seeker, are calling for the LA28 Chairman to resign. Time after time, the call is for Wasserman not to be a “distraction” in the City of Angels’ latest turn to the spotlight in two years.

“My job as mayor of Los Angeles is to make sure our city is absolutely ready to have the best Olympics in the history of the Olympics,” Bass told CNN’s Dana Bash about the pros and cons of the board, the IOC and Wasserman’s friend Donald Trump. “So my focus is a little different, but the behavior of Maxwell, what they were involved in is disgusting,” he said.

“Bass is a shrewd operator,” an insider with strong connections to City Hall and Hollywood told Deadline tonight. “He knows Wasserman is going to be a problem in his reelection, a problem in the Olympics, so he stood up. It’s on the board again next time, but how can he continue now?”

The founder of the marketing and talent agency Wasserman left his company, his clients to the fury of Hollywood when a series of apparently dirty and suggestive emails from 2003 between his then-fiancé and Maxwell surfaced on January 30 among millions of pages and heavily redacted photos of Epstein that were destroyed by the Department of Justice. As Wasserman prepares to travel to Italy for the opening of the XXV Winter Olympics, his people released a carefully crafted statement emphasizing that the manager was “very sorry to have had any association” with the 2019 suicides of Epstein and Maxwell.

Representatives for Wasserman had nothing to say tonight about Mayor Bass’ insistence that he resign from LA28. Wasserman pal Governor Gavin Newsom is back in California and it looks like he’ll be in touch with the LA28 seat, I hear.

With all that, as strong as the support for the LA28 board was last week, Wasserman has been sensing a change in the situation in recent days.

After weeks of insisting that he would not be leaving his Wasserman team, with top clients such as Chappell Roan and soccer star Abby Wambach gone, Wasserman announced late on February 13 that he was selling his stake in his company. Amid pledges to focus on LA28, Wasserman couldn’t avoid echoing the same language as mayor and City Council member Nithya Raman and others, and promised not to be a “distraction” because of her appearance on the toxic Epstein Files.

The investment firm Providence Equity Partners, Wasserman’s biggest backer, watched the client walk out and the agent mumble with fear before last week telling the boss, holding 40% of the money in the company that discloses its famous name, it was time to go.

Last NBA All-Star weekend in LA a few days ago, Wasserman had to withdraw from some public events because of his links to Epstein and Maxwell. His status at the February 26 meeting with LA28 board member and former LA Lakers owner Jeanie Bass is unclear at this time, as organizers seek to find an exit strategy.

At a cost of more than 7 billion dollars and growing, and heavily dependent on money from Trump and the feds, the third Summer Olympics in LA will take place from July 14-30, 2028 – even without Casey Wasserman or Karen Bass.